Thursday, January 04, 2007

Ah, January

I've been neglecting the blog, being off-line as I have been until today. Nicolas came over and worked away at my alien-to-him iBook of 2001 until finally, a couple of Mac-friend phone calls later, he had me back up and surfing like everyone else.

Its interesting, this world wide web. In N. America its an absolute passion, nothing less, for millions of people. It seems like every single person I know has their own website/blog/flickr account/whatever. In Mexico (which I am quite aware qualifies as "North America" according to whoever's in charge) people use the net all the time but its not the same, its MSN-ing and websurfing, not this absolute life passion that it is in these parts. But that's N. America for you, life through glowing screens.

One of those screens was set up in the lobby at 181 University yesterday, to show Canada vs. USA in a world junior hockey tournament. It was great, a 1-1 tie after sudden death overtime when I arrived. Frank told me to stay there and give him updates instead of fetching some waybill I'd left over at the Dungeon. So I obeyed my dispatcher and got really pumped watching tomorrows hockey stars trade penalty shots for admission to the final game.

Its not like soccer where the goalie is at a huge disadvantage because the net is so big, a hockey net makes the whole confrontation just about even. And a hockey shooter doesn't just shook from a fixed point as in soccer/futbol, he skates in from centre ice to add to the drama. Canada won it 6-5 or so. All the office workers cheered. It was more joy than I'd ever seen expressed in one of those buildings so stark in their perpetual absence of human emotion. I felt great for the rest of the day, a non-hockey fan thrilled by what I had seen and a non-patriot actually proud of 'our boys' holding the national game up.

Half the country on the edge of its seat, so it seemed, while doubtless in the U.S. of A no one even noticed. Hell, in Sweden, no one seemed to notice: the rink was empty. Of course, the Swedish team was no nowhere to be seen at that point.